STO Soccer Film Review: Great Quotes Edition

byThe YankonJune 1, 2009

There have been many movies about soccer throughout the years with some amazing writing about the world’s most beautiful game, but there have also been plenty of movies that are not about soccer that feature great nuggets of philosophy concerning the world’s favorite sport.

I have taken some time to root around IMDB in order to compile a list of a few of my favorite film quotes about soccer from non-soccer films, and here they are for your enjoyment:

Meatballs (1979)

Tripper: Well, that’s life in the fast paced, slam bang, live-on-the razor’s-edge, laugh in the face of death world of junior league soccer.

Vision Quest (1985)

Elmo: I was in the room here one day watchin’ the Mexican channel on TV. I don’t know nothin’ about Pele. I’m watchin’ what this guy can do with a ball and his feet. Next thing I know, he jumps in the air and flips into a somersault and kicks the ball in – upside down and backwards. The goddamn goalie never knew what the fuck hit him. Pele gets excited and he rips off his jersey and starts running around the stadium waving it around his head. Everybody’s screaming in Spanish. I’m here, sitting alone in my room, and I start crying. That’s right, I start crying. Because another human being, a species that I happen to belong to, could kick a ball, and lift himself, and the rest of us sad-assed human beings, up to a better place to be, if only for a minute… Let me tell ya, kid – it was pretty goddamned glorious. It ain’t the six minutes… it’s what happens in that six minutes.

Dogma (1999)

Loki: Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, outside of soccer.

Robin Williams: Live on Broadway (2002)

Robin: [on the 2002 World Cup] America made it to the Round of 16 baby! WHOOPEE! We’re no longer in the Special Olympics category! They used to see us and go [in a French voice] Oh, give it to them, they’re damaged people. Yeah, there’s a few soccer fans here, the rest of you are like, “Uh, that’s like football without pads, right”? For the rest of the world, it is football. For us, it’s “A strange sport, played by damaged people.”

Konkekable (2004)

Henrik: The journalists and the politicians work in the same building. That’s like having a referee who’s eating breakfast with the Brazilian soccer team the night before the world finals.

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

Homer: America will never embrace soccer!

If I forgot any of your favorite film quotes about soccer, please let me hear about it in the comments. I’d like to compile a comprehensive list of great soccer sayings, so any bone you can throw me would be appreciated.